Primary Navigation

Rolfing’s EFCA Digital Archives Project

Rolfing has partnered with the Evangelical Free Church of America’s Archives and joined the growing number of libraries across the nation in creating our own Digital Collections program. Rolfing and the EFCA digitize books, magazines, and photographs (among others), and users may browse, download, and share them from any computer or tablet.

What are Digital Collections?

Digital Collections are repositories of material that have been digitized by a library or institution for wider consumption. They may include archival manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, books, or more. Trinity and the EFCA have decided that their collections will showcase our unique heritage as a school and the legacy of the Evangelical Free Church of America.

These collections are hosted through the Consortium of Academic Research Libraries of Illinois (CARLI). Their website hosts hundreds of free collections from colleges and institutions across the state, covering nearly every discipline and subject matter. You can browse CARLI’s general collections here.

The former official magazine of the Free Church, the Evangelical Beacon

Historic photographs of Free Church leaders, conferences, and more

The official published directories of the EFCA

How Do I Use Them?

Select a collection you wish to browse. From there you can either select a search category to display particular works (by year, author, or theme, for example), click the “browse collection” button which will display all the works in alphabetical order (this can be changed with the “sort by” bar). You can try to narrow your search with the Search and Advanced Search bars at the top of the screen.

Once you select an item, you can either read it in the browser, or download it as a pdf or image. The document viewer has a number of options to control how you view the object, including zoom and rotation settings. If the object is a book, clicking on the “Contents” tab on the right will display all the chapter markers, allowing you to jump to a particular point instantaneously. Clicking on the Text tab on the left will display the raw text transcription of an object.

The “Text Search” search bar will allow you to locate particular names, phrases, or words in a document. This works best in conjunction with the “Text” tab. If the document is a pdf, it is better to click the magnifying glass in the pdf itself, as the search feature has a harder time parsing pdf text.

Stay Tuned…

That covers a basic rundown of the new collections and how to use them. Keep your eyes on the Digital Collections, as they are being continuously updated with new material. We hope you find these new features useful and enjoyable!